


Til Death Parts Us

by mackenziebutterschnapps (hannibalsbattlebot)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Breathplay, Cancer, Consensual Violence, Disease, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Mild canon divergence, Non-Explicit Sex, Rough Body Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2014-11-07
Packaged: 2018-02-24 10:17:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2577947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hannibalsbattlebot/pseuds/mackenziebutterschnapps
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. Lecter gets over-involved with yet another patient. And yes, his couple's therapy as "unconventional" as his individual therapy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Til Death Parts Us

The first time she came to dinner, she called his foie gras cruel.

 For a moment, it was as if Jack wasn't even in the room. Bella's response verged on the impolite, but it was just honesty, plainly spoken. When someone pricked Hannibal's interest, it was as if they went from muddy sepia tones to color. At dinner that night, although she wore a simple white dress, Bella lit up for Hannibal in vivid color.

 _So she knows cruelty when she sees it_ , Hannibal thought. Leaning over to move a plate he could smell on her that she knew of death, too. She was looking at death's bare skull without flinching and without wanting her hand held.

Dr. Lecter didn't usually do couple's therapy, but the Crawfords weren't just any couple. He savored the anticipation of hearing Jack's weaknesses and of being a first-hand observer to his pain. Having Jack confide in him about Miriam was one delicious layer of the cake, and hearing about his marital troubles another. Spending time with Bella Crawford would be the frosting. It was so sweet it was nearly too much, but too delicious for him to turn down a second helping.

 

Bella confided in her psychiatrist. She was frustrated, she said, with Jack's attempts to save her. He never insulted her by trying to save her before. He treated her differently now that he knew she was dying.

"How does he treat you differently?"

"He treats me with a deference that borders on cloying," she said. "There is such a thing as too nice."

"Has Jack stopped seeing you as a sexual being?" Hannibal asked

Bella's expression changed in an infinitesimal way, both protective and challenging. Hannibal maintained the same expression he had throughout, to show her this was a question like any other. He was a professional. Asking personal questions was his job. Bella didn't answer right away.

"I only ask," he continued, "because this is a common side effect when one partner is ill. The relationship becomes lopsided, almost parental in nature. There is a barrier in most people's minds not to see the person they are caring for parentally as also a sexual partner. Usually this is not a problem. It sets up a taboo that acts as a barrier to abuse. But when one partner becomes ill, and therefore dependent, the power shifts unnaturally and there can be problems for both partners adjusting to the new power structure."

"Jack sees my body as a thing to be managed," she said. "or something to fight against."

"It isn't to be enjoyed."

"There is very little joy in general in our lives." She lifted her chin and sat straighter in her chair.

"The physical has become a problem," he said. "This is a fact, but I think Jack is wrong in his approach in a way that is unfair to you."

Hannibal sighed, got out of his chair, and went to the window. He turned his head so she could still hear him. He was weighing his words.

"Bella," he said. "I need to step out of my role as your psychiatrist for a moment. I can't ignore that I have had you at my table as well as on the proverbial therapist's couch. What I want to say skirts the border between professional and friendly advice. Come here, please. Stand next to me."

She went over to him. They were standing next to each other, shoulder to shoulder. In heels she was the same height as the doctor. Although their shoulders brushed, Bella focused her attention out the window. There was no real view. He had dressed up the windows with the dramatic curtains, but behind it the view was a normal city street.

"There needs to be a person in your life who validates your identity as a woman of remarkable power and sensuality."

"Jack thinks I am strong enough to fight this disease," she said. "He has more faith in me than I do."

"His vision of your strength is skewed. It takes great strength of character to know when to submit with dignity," he said. "It is not cowardly to fight a losing battle to the bitter end, but it is also not cowardly to acknowledge defeat and fall on one's sword. If you do that, you deny your enemy the pleasure of dispatching you."

"Cancer is not an intelligent enemy," she said. "It cannot feel pleasure by humiliating me. It would be selfish of me to fall on my sword when Jack wants me to live as long as I can."

"And yet he is being selfish in his own way, asking you to fight for him. If he respected the Bella you are and not the Bella he wants you to be, he would step back and allow you a dignified path out of pain. He is transforming you into a living saint. A saint can be beautiful and courageous, but she cannot be physical and fierce.  Saints, particular female saints, are notable for their detachment from the physical. There is no room in ossified relics for the pliant warmth of flesh. Jack is already making you into the memory he will eventually have of you. It will make it easier for him when you die, but in the meanwhile, you have to be a living saint. You are no saint. You are much more complex than that." He walked behind her. His presence behind her, out of her line of sight, made her skin tingle. "I prefer to go back to the example set by the ancients. The Greeks and Romans ascribed all kinds of passions to their gods and goddesses and it didn't detract from their holiness or power."

"Are you going to tell Jack all this?" she asked, smiling with the thought. "Are you going to tell my husband how wrong he is?"

"Your time, forgive me for saying, is too short . We simply don't have the time to persuade Jack to see you as you are," he said. "It would be destructive to him. I would have to tear down the very edifice he has created to keep himself whole in the face of this loss."

"I have no choice but to be his living saint?" she said, the smile vanished.

Hannibal reached down, took her hand and brought it up to his mouth. He kissed the back of her hand.

"Be a sinner with someone who knows you better than that. With me you can be a goddess of wrath and power."

She took her hand away from him, considered it for a moment, then drew back and slapped him across the face, hard. Both the cracking sound and the way his neck whipped were deeply satisfying.

He scooped his hair away from his face and spoke. "Again. Do it again."

She complied. Same cheek, same hand, same crack.

"Did you find that satisfying?" he asked.

"Immensely." Although her hand stung, she did feel a relief.

"You have that in you," he said. "A very measured anger."

The relief was ebbing and she was feeling a creeping shame. He had the same impassive expression but his cheek was red.  "Is my therapy to be acted out with my fists?"

"Among other things, yes," he said.

"You have done nothing to deserve my anger," she said.

"That may be true, but I can still act as a surrogate" he said. "I am a proponent of proper expression of our passions. If one carefully vents these violent emotions they are controlled as we can go on pretending we are civilized."

"Like eating foie gras," she said.  "Dressing up cruelty as refinement."

"My menu is a refined savagery," he said. "but I never make apologies for my appetites."

Her smile was cutting. "I think we've left appropriate psychiatric practices long behind, doctor."

His head turned at angle to consider her and he said. "When you hit me or when I began propositioning you?"

"Are you propositioning me?"

"Certainly."

"What if I tell Jack?"

"I will tell him you misunderstood me," he said.

He came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders, fingers fanning out over the creamy silk fabric of her blouse over her collarbone.  He leaned in to whisper in her ear.

"Whatever happens next," he said. "I hold nothing against you. Relish it as truly living. Whether you break my fingers one by one for my impertinence, or politely extricate yourself to denounce me to your loyal spouse, or decide to give in to my entreaties. Enjoy the experience."

She touched his hands with hers, arresting the movement and thought, briefly but seriously, about bending one of his fingers back until she heard the bone snap.

Instead of breaking Hannibal's finger, she turned and kissed him full on the mouth. She waited for the guilt to rush in, that final spur that would send her out of this situation, but it never happened. It was just _exciting_.

Bella remembered being pursued by those men in Italy, but she didn't have the innocent remembrances that Jack did. It wasn't a dinner party anecdote to her. Her time in Italy was one of freedom. She was far away from her friends and family in a culture than relished sensuality. Yes, those men on the quay trailed her and called her "bella, bella." But what Jack didn't know, or didn't care to remember, was that sometimes she took one of those Italian men back to her apartment and let them speak quick almost unintelligible Italian to her while they made love to her. Every day they were lined up on the quay, grouped like a chocolates in a box. She could pass by or she could pluck one of her choosing to enjoy. Eventually she settled on only being Jack's Bella, but she had been other men's Bella before he came along.

She let herself be lead to the proverbial therapist's couch. She spoke when she finally found the breath to speak.

\-- E 'conveniente per eliminare i vecchi dèi quando si vuole impostare i nostri desideri al loro posto .

_It is convenient to discard the old gods when we want to set our desires in their place._

 -- Chi può dire che cosa santi o divinità fanno quando è notte ? Quando i nostri occhi non li stanno guardando. Quando i fedeli se ne sono andati , fare adorano l'un l'altro ?"

  _Who can say what the saints or gods do when it is night? When our eyes are not watching them. When the worshipers are gone, do they worship each other?_

 -- Non parlarmi di santi. Si vuole avvolgere il peccato in un bel vestito e lo chiamano santo . 

_Don't talk to me about saints. You want to wrap sin in a pretty dress and call it holy._

 --Ciò che è utile è santo . Posso essere utile a voi . 

_That which is useful is holy. I can be useful to you._

 --Non è niente di più di questo ? 

_It is nothing more than that?_

 --Salva il tuo morbidezza per tuo marito . Dare i spigoli vivi per me . Se mi hanno tagliato , posso sopportarlo . 

_Save your softness for your husband. Give the sharp edges to me. If they cut me, I can bear it._

* * *

 

Week after week, session after session, she gave him her sharp edges. Nails and teeth. Scratches and bruises where they wouldn't show. Once, during a playful-turning-to-serious struggle she hit him, accidentally, with her elbow just below his eye. He sucked his teeth knowing it would leave a bruise.

"Please be careful next time," he said, touching his tender cheek with his fingertips. "I have patients to see."

She had dressed for the occasion, wearing a garter belt she hadn't felt like wearing for ages. Parading around in lingerie for Jack held no appeal. He still loved her and she loved him, but it was pathetic  for her to insist he find her sexy. He wanted to swaddle her in flannel pajamas, cuddle her like a kitten. She could let him now, but she couldn't have accepted his care with such good grace if she hadn't been draining her poison elsewhere.

Walking into Hannibal's office with her head held high and the unpredictability of what could happen made her forget her problems breathing and her lack of stamina. It wasn't always violence and it wasn't always sex. Sometimes they sat and talked, but she never had to retract her claws. She once called him a sadist, since he took obvious pleasure from other people's pain.

"I take pleasure in the healthy expression of certain people's pain," he said.

He was playing easy with her. Beneath the fine words and the fancy clothing he was iron and hard muscle. His vigor never waned, while she could feel herself wasting away, being eaten by both the disease and the cure.

She called him on it once. He had let himself be pinned as she undressed him.

"I'm not as strong as I used to be," she said, breathing heavy even with the small exertion. "Even at my peak I couldn't have really subdued you."

"I can put up a fight, if you like."

Faster than she expected, he grabbed her throat with both hands and squeezed just enough to show how much harder he could be squeezing. His thumb fit perfectly in the notch where her jaw attached below her ear. She raked her fingernails over his hands, but he didn't budge.  If she could have gotten hold of one of his finger, she would have broken it this time.

He let go of her neck just as the stars and blackness were starting to cloud her vision. She went limp and he guided her to the floor. He lay beside her and calmly watched as she struggled for breath.

 

Hannibal knew the most private things about the Crawfords, even if she didn't tell him. They didn't have many sessions left. Events in other quarters were moving to an endgame. Even still, he wasn't prepared for the new scent she had. Underneath the decay and the awful chemical stench of the poisons running through her veins, he could smell the earthy sweetness of copulation.

"You've been with him, haven't you?" He said.

"He is my husband," she said.

She wrapped her sweater tightly around herself, although the room was comfortable. Her skin had a waxy sheen and her hair was thinning.

"You have been encouraging me to do what I want. Jack noticed the change in me. A little extra fight, he said. One last rally. We spent a romantic evening together. He hasn't totally stopped seeing me as a sexual being, Dr. Lecter."

"Did he treat you like spun glass? Like something breakable?"

Hannibal was trying to change it from romantic to pathetic with his scorn. It wouldn't work. She decided their night together was the perfect ending to the story of Jack and Bella.

The story of Hannibal and Bella would have a different ending.

"I told him we had an affair," she said.

"Why would you do that?" he asked, his voice conveying only impersonal curiosity.

"To clean the slate. I owe Jack that much. Now maybe he won't think of me as a saint and he will be able to move on when I die."

"Or maybe you will saddle him with a betrayal he can never understand because you will be beyond his reach to answer his questions."

She laughed. It was harsh and unlike her. "I guess you'll have to be the one to answer his questions."

She was having trouble keeping her eyes open. It was almost as if she were intoxicated.

"Tell me, Bella, what did you take?"

"My morphine," she said "every last bit of it."

 

Hannibal brought her to the hospital. He dared to stay while she regained consciousness, whimpering when she found she was still alive.

"I couldn't let you die," he said. "I confess I have more in common with Jack than I thought. I, too, am enjoying the display of your battle. You are an artist. You suffer with a dignity few can achieve. I am not ready for the play to end, Bella."

She slapped him across the face, as hard as she ever had.

"You didn't tell Jack, did you?"

"No," she wheezed. "I couldn't hurt him like that."

"But you wanted to hurt me?"

"I wanted to make you feel fear."

Hannibal was still in Bella's hospital room when Jack arrived. If Hannibal had any doubts that Bella had not told him, they were dispelled by Jack's friendly greeting.

"You've done enough, doctor, you don't need to stay," Jack said.

"I would like to stay, if you don't object."

"Of course not," Jack said. "Bella is sleeping and I don't feel being alone right now."

Jack didn't want to talk. When Bella started to wake up again, Hannibal excused himself to give them a few minutes alone. He returned with coffee from the hospital cafeteria.  

"Here's something to perk me up?" Jack said. And it would have, had Hannibal not laced it with a sedative.

 

Hannibal's plan was to do what he needed to at his house and be back before Jack regained consciousness. It was a good, not perfect alibi which would stand up to casual inspection. When he returned, Jack was still asleep, slumped in his chair, but Bella was awake. She struggled to speak.

"I've been trying to wake him up," she said. "You…drugged him. Why?"

"Did you call a nurse?" Hannibal checked Jack's pulse. Steady and strong.

"I wanted to hear…what you had to say…first."

"I did give him a mild sedative. He was distraught. Your actions were upsetting to him."

"He took a sedative from you?" Bella asked.

"I may have given it to him surreptitiously. For his own good."

"Where did you go? You were gone for hours."

"I had something to attend to," he said.

"In the middle of the night?"

"Psychiatrists do not keep regular business hours," he said. "I have other patients who need me."

This last flourish of arrogance, trying to set Bella in her place as just another patient, was enough for her.

"Please go. I don't want you here."

"I need to stay until Jack awakens. To tell him goodbye."

"You…need an alibi. I won't ask what you've done. Some release of animal passions, doctor? What sin did you vent tonight. Lust? Rage? Jealousy?" she said. "If I tell Jack you were here all night, until…" she looked over at the clock "8 am, will you leave now?"

"Thank you," he said, with a small nod.

"Just go. I don't want to see you ever again."

"You may change your mind when you choose to forgive me," he said, glancing at Jack again before he left.

 

She eventually  forgave him for bringing her back to life.  He changed her punctuation, but she forgave him. She summoned him to her chamber and he answered her summons. He was called on the carpet, not to explain himself—because he wouldn't—but to be the recipient of her absolution. He presumed to impact her story.

"I'm here because I can't abandon Jack," she said. "Not again." It was in the nature, she thought, of gods and goddesses to fight and then consider the mortals later.

"Love and death are the great hinges on which all human sympathies turn. What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others lives beyond us."

"You saved me for Jack," she said, and he did not contradict her. "Will you save him for me when I'm gone?"

He paused, listening to her raspy breaths.

"I can only think of one way to save Jack some of the agony," he said. "We tell him the truth about us. If he can hold your betrayal in mind, he will remember you as a full person, someone whose treachery will make it easier for him to move on."

"Then we tell him the truth about everything," she said. "I will tell him you weren't in my hospital room…the night Beverly Katz was killed…and that you asked me to lie for you."

"There is another way," he said. "We tell Jack nothing. You and I leave the country together. Spare Jack having to watch you die. It isn't abandonment. It is mercy. I can take you back to Italy. Jack can't take you there. He would be lost in the dazzling sunlight of his memories, unable to face the twilight world of your passing."

"And you could coldly watch me die."

She remembered the way his hands felt around her throat and the cool way he watched her struggle for air.

"I could do what needs to be done," he said.

 

Jack had figured it out. He figured it out because he was a fucking cop. 

He had been suspicious there was someone else before. To put it bluntly, he thought Bella was having an affair. He had been wrong that time. It had been cancer that she had been keeping from him. This time he knew he was right. The tension between them had eased. She was more accepting of his care, less likely to distance herself. It was unlike her. She was acting so much the way he had wanted her to when he first learned of her diagnosis. Now that she was so receptive to him, he didn't trust it. Someone else was hearing her tears and grief. Was therapy that good? Could it so thoroughly purge her feelings?

When Jack started to believe Will about Hannibal, it cast everything in a new light. Hannibal killed Beverly, Will insisted. But if Hannibal killed Beverly, then Bella lied. Bella, angry about being alive, angry at Jack and Hannibal both, had lied about Hannibal being at the hospital.

Why would she do that?

He brought the question to Will.

Will thought about it for a moment, a grieved look on his face.

"I'm sorry, Jack," he said finally. "I know how seductive Hannibal can be. He took a lot of pleasure removing everything from my life that wasn't him. He's doing the same to you. He saved Bella because he already had her. He saved her for himself, not for you."

Will asked, gently, if it was possible Bella would leave with Hannibal. The question seemed so specific to Jack he wondered, not for the first time, what Will knew.

"Did he tell you anything about taking Bella with him on the lam?" Jack snapped.

"I swear, Jack, he never even mentioned her to me," he said, "but it would be just like him to spring a surprise like that without telling me."

 

If Bella wanted to leave, Jack wouldn't stop her. But he would be damned if she was going to leave with Hannibal Lecter. Jack wasn't going to let Kade Prurnell or the lack of a badge stop him from stopping Hannibal. He went alone. He went early.

"This is the clearest moment of our friendship," Jack said, taking out his gun. Will would disapprove. Will had something lodged in the soft meat of his dark heart that would not allow him to harm Hannibal. Jack had no such compunction. He would apologize, but he wouldn't mean it. Killing Hannibal would set both Will and Bella free.

Things did not go as planned.

 

Bella had feigned sleep until Jack left. Jack kissed her forehead. She knew it was the last time. She wanted him to take her in his arms but if she told he would try to stop her, and she didn't want to be stopped. She was going to use her last ounce of energy to drag herself off to a private corner to die. She thought about leaving a note, but Jack would know what her absence meant without it. He would not like it, but she would give him the respect of not flinging her final words at him without giving him a chance to answer them.

She was already waiting at the airport when she had second thoughts. Her phone rang and when she saw it was Jack she felt relief. _It’s a sign_ , she thought.

"Jack?" she said. But there were only strange noises that came across the line. She did not want to think about what they might mean.

"I'm at the airport," she said. "Don't ask me why right now. Please come get me. I was wrong." She started to cry, the sobs ragged and gasping. "If you can hear me, Jack…" The line went dead.

 

Bella twisted the air hose that lead off her oxygen mask. The transatlantic flight would be grueling for her, even in first class.

"Ah, Pheobe," Hannibal said. "Don't fret. I'm a surgeon. Your Jack is unconscious but he will live. You are doing him a kindness."

Bella looked out the airplane window, then moved her mask to the side so she could be heard. "Am I being selfish or selfless?"

"You have the rare situation where it is both," he said.

She thought of the sun-drenched Mediterranean shore.

"I do want to die in Italy," she said wistfully, looking at the clouds.

He held her hand on the armrest.

"And you will," he said. "One way or the other."

**Author's Note:**

> I gave Bella the alias of Pheobe, because according to Wikipedia she was "the consort of Coeus" and Coeus was described as the " Titan of intellect and the axis of heaven around which the constellations revolved' which sounds like a Hannibal self-description.
> 
> My apologies about the Italian. That comes right from google translate and is probably rife with errors.


End file.
